The E-Commerce Blog

Google recently announced the launch of Google Commerce Search, an new customizable product search engine for e-commerce retailers. I watched the video and read a few blog posts, and it looked like yet another excellent Google service offering.

After seeing all the buzz over the last few days, I thought I’d check it out for my own e-commerce retailer, 2BigFeet.com. I visited the Google Commerce Search website only to discover that the starting price for the product is $50,000 per year.

Most small to medium sized e-commerce retailers don’t spend $50,000 on their entire IT system, including e-commerce software, web hosting, etc. Google has effectively priced themselves out of the market for most retailers.

Unfortunately, this is a huge disappointment coming from Google. As this is targeted towards retailers, I didn’t expect it to be a free service like Gmail, but did expect pricing to be more usage-based (like Amazon EC2 or S3 services). With a pricing beginning at $50,000 per year I wonder how many retailers will be using Google’s new service?

Are you ready for the holiday shopping season? Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here soon, and you better have your site ready now because people are out in force shopping online so they don’t have to get stuck in traffic jams and hectic malls getting last-minute gifts.

Here are a few tips to help you get ready:

• Make sure your website is error-free.
  There’s nothing worse than getting halfway into the busiest season of the year only to find out that you have an error on your shopping cart pages. Test your entire site for errors, misspellings and inaccuracies.

• Make sure your website is error-free
  There’s nothing worse than getting halfway into the busiest season of the year only to find out that you have an error on your shopping cart pages. Test your entire site for errors, misspellings and inaccuracies.

• Review your Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
  Check your Pay-Per-Click campaigns to make sure that you are bidding on all the appropriate terms, and make sure you have conversion tracking setup to test your campaign’s effectiveness.

• Dust off your email list
  If you haven’t seen an email newsletter lately, now is the time. Make sure you have an opt-im list and start promoting your seasonal specials to your customers and newsletter subscribers.

• Check your search engine rankings
  Check your ranking in the major search engines. It’s a little late to get a large improvement before the holiday season, but you can make small changes that will have an impact. Even moving up one position can make a big difference in overall sales.

• Check with your suppliers
  Make sure your suppliers have ample inventory for the holiday season, and place orders to fill in any inventory you are low on now. As December comes closer, many suppliers will begin having shortages and will be shipping slow because of the volume.

• Update your return and shipping policies
  Let your customers know about your holiday return policy and shipping policy. When is the last day they can order and still have their items for Christmas? What if they need to return after the new year?

• Update your home page
  Make seasonal changes to your website and home page layouts to show off new colors and specials. Show your customers your holiday spirit.